My wife and I have spent countless hours stealing, adapting and modifying from so many of the ovens before us in the forum. Thank you. We have finally begun moving forward with the help of a friend who knows what a trowel and brick are. It has a been a lot of fun already reading the posts and finding inspiration just when I think we are stuck time and time again. Here are a few pictures of where we are in the journey.

We made some more progress this weekend as the warm days in NY are quickly fleeting. Getting close to hopefully completing the dome over the next week. Reading up on the chimney and trying to decide if we should go with a stainless or clay flue. Any suggestions? The final facade will be covered with cultured stone.

Once you clear the arch it kind of gets easier in someways more difficult in others. Continue to watch you vertical joints and avoid stacking if possible. Clay/stainless up to you. Stainless is substantially more costly unless you can find something on craigslist or ebay for cheap.

Attached is our latest progress. I enclosed the dome on "Turkey Eve" and will start the insulation and chimney on the next nice day. Looks like we are finishing just in time in NY, the weather has turned as of today and the forecast is 30s for the next week after a week of 50s and sunny.

We poured the roof just before the snow hit 2 weeks ago and have been trying out the oven over the past 2 weeks for the holidays. It has been a lot of fun and exciting to see all of this work come to fruition. Hopefully in the spring we can get to work on the counter tops and cultured stone.

I used 3 of the FB boards underneath the oven after looking into buying locally from different refractories in NY. Also, I wrapped the oven in 3 blankets and so far everything is working perfect. The snow that you see on the attached picture stayed during all 3 firings this week without melting away. We were very happy to see the insulation was worth the price and effort.

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